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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 24

2.—His Honor the Superintendent to the Hon. the Premier

2.—His Honor the Superintendent to the Hon. the Premier.

Province of Otago, N.Z., Superintendent's Office, Dunedin,

Sir,—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 28th March, informing me that Messrs. Gisborne, Seed, and Knowles, are visiting this Province for the purpose therein stated; and enclosing copy of instructions with which these gentlemen have been furnished.

In reply I have to say, that the present action of the Colonial Executive, in taking for granted that the New Parliament, to which was relegated the ratification or otherwise of "The Abolition of Provinces Bill," will ratify the same, appears to me to be premature, and that it will be time enough to take such action after the Parliament has determined as to what is to be the specific form of Government for the future.

I cannot for a moment suppose that in the case of Otago, where under much abused Provincial Institutions, the Province has grown up and flourished to a marvellous extent, these institutions are to be wantonly destroyed in the very prime of their manhood, and directly in the teeth of the declared and all bat unanimous desire and convictions of the people. I feel persuaded that if a plebiscite were taken on this page 4 question, a vast proportion of the votes would be on one side, and in favor of the Province retaining its own revenues, distributing them on its own behalf, and working out its own destiny in its own way.

Your favourite idea of Counties, with fixed endowments, far more permanent and secure than any that is likely to be acquired from Colonial Legislation, has been for years within reach of the people of Otago, if they chose to avail themselves thereof, and it needs no action on the part of the Colonial Legislature to confer that privilege on them.

Under all the circumstances of the case, I desire to be excused from being a party to initiating the policy now in question, as being alike disastrous to the interests and repugnant to the feelings and wishes of the people of Otago.

I cannot recognise the right of the rest of the Colony to force upon Otago any system of administration of its local affairs which is to be centred at Wellington, and which does not commend itself to the judgment of the people concerned.

It is bad enough, for example, that Taranaki, with 6,000 people, should have an equal voice in the disposal of the consolidated revenue, as has Dunedin with its population of 25,000; and it will be infinitely worse, that in disposing of our territorial revenues and dealing with the domestic affairs of Otago, the Province of Taranaki is to have as much power as the City of Dunedin.

The probable revenue of Otago may be set down as about one-half that of the whole Colony, while the voting power of the Province in the disposal thereof in the Colonial Parliament will be less than one-fourth of the whole. If left to itself the revenue of Otago would, I believe, in a very few years exceed that of the whole of the rest of the Colony put together.

You may rest assured that it is a grand mistake to suppose that the people of this Province will tamely submit to have forced upon them a system of political communism from which they have everything to lose and nothing to gain, to aid and abet in which, on my part, would be to belie the position which I have for so many years held at the hands of the people.

I cannot think that the action of the late Colonial Parliament, which, as shown at the recent general election, has been so universally condemned in Otago, will be maintained by the new Parliament in so far as this Province is concerned.

It is, I think, useless to disguise from ourselves that, stripped of all the verbosity and special pleading with which the question may be surrounded, there remains the naked fact that Colonial Finance, and not the good of the people of New Zealand, is at the bottom of the proposed changes—changes which I have an intense conviction will, if carried into effect, very seriously prejudice the interests and retard the progress of this section of the Colony.

I need not say that this has hitherto been the foremost Province in New Zealand, and that it is not by depriving it of its revenues, bring- page 5 ing them under the sole appropriation of the Parliament at Wellington, and reducing the Province to the dead level of Colonial uniformity that it can hope to maintain that position.

If I might venture to say so, it is to my mind deeply to be deplored that Colonial statesmen can see no other way of grappling with the evils' which have arisen out of a vicious system of finance than by applying a remedy which cannot fail to prove worse than the disease.

No doubt it may be said that, while my views are limited to the narrow platform of a Province, you are called to deal with the interests of the Colony as a whole. I submit, however, that no policy can be beneficial to the Colony which affects so injuriously such an important section thereof as that over which I have the honour to preside.

In consequence of what I have so fully stated in this letter, and as I am advised that the sending of three gentlemen to inspect the departments of the Provincial Government is without legal or constitutional authority, I must inform Messrs. Gisborne, Seed, and Knowles, that so far as the Provincial Government of Otago is concerned, they cannot expect any aid in their mission.

Regretting that, in the performance of my public duty, I should have been compelled to refuse your request,

I have, &c.,

James Macandrew,

Superintendent of Otago.

The Hon. the Premier,

Wellington.